1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication apparatus having an incoming mail rejection function, and is configured such that, in a case in which the user has transmitted a mail to a particular address for which a reception-permission has not been set, the communication apparatus permits the reception of the mail from this particular address.
2. Description of the Related Art
As communication apparatus such as cellular phones and so forth have come into widespread use, more and more services are coming to use the cellular phone. As one of such services, cellular phone providers provide a service called the cellular-phone blank mail system/cellular coupon. This service allows the user to receive a reply mail including a benefit from a predetermined address by transmitting a blank mail to the predetermined address via the cellular phone. Using this benefit, the user can receive a service such as a discount service or the like.
On the other hand, in order to prevent junk mail which is increasing today, in general, the user sets the configuration of the cellular phone or a network server using the incoming mail rejection function of the cellular phone so as to reject the reception of mail from particular mail addresses other than the mail addresses for which a reception-permission has been set.
However, such an arrangement leads to a problem as follows. That is to say, in a case in which the user has transmitted a blank mail to a particular address for which a reception-permission has not been set when the user desires to use a service of cellular-phone blank mail system/cellular coupon using the cellular phone, in some cases, such an incoming mail rejection function blocks this reply mail.
In order to solve such a problem, an e-mail transmission/reception system which is capable of delivering a replay mail in a sure manner for a blank mail from a cellular phone even if the configuration of the cellular phone has been set so as to reject e-mail from the Internet (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-113867). In the e-mail transmission/reception system, a first apparatus receives an e-mail via the Internet from the user apparatus which is a cellular phone. Then, the e-mail thus received is forwarded to a predetermined PHS e-mail address, following which a second apparatus acquires the transmission mail address of the user apparatus from the e-mail thus forwarded from the first apparatus, and an e-mail is transmitted to the transmission mail address from the PHS. In this case, the second apparatus transmits an e-mail which shows a Web page URL for use of only the transmission mail address.
Such a method in which a mail transmitted to the cellular phone is temporarily transmitted to another apparatus, following which the cellular phone receives the mail from this apparatus, has a problem as follows. That is to say, when the cellular phone receives a mail from a mail address for which an incoming mail rejection has not been set, such a mail reception operation involves such an additional apparatus in addition to the cellular phone, leading to complicated operations. It is preferable that, after the user transmits a mail via the cellular phone to a mail address for which a reception-permission has not been set, the user can receive a reply mail using the cellular phone alone.
The present invention has been made in order to solve the aforementioned problem. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a communication apparatus having an incoming mail rejection function, and is configured such that, in a case in which the user has transmitted a mail to a particular address for which a reception-permission has not been set, the communication apparatus permits the reception of the mail from this particular address without a need for the user to disable the incoming mail rejection function.